WaterUnderground

Tom Gleeson

I am a hydrogeologist at University of Victoria, Canada who is interested in groundwater sustainability, mega-scale groundwater systems, groundwater recharge and discharge and fluid flow around geologic structures. My goal is fundamental and applied research and teaching to enable sustainable groundwater use.

Active learning in large classes: a gallery ‘walk’ with a 100 students

Active learning in large classes: a gallery ‘walk’ with a 100 students

Active learning in large classrooms is difficult but not impossible – here is one example of an active learning technique developed for small classrooms, the gallery walk, which I have successfully re-purposed for a class of 100 (but I see no real upper limit on class size with the modified version of this activity). “In Gallery Walk student teams rotate to provide bulleted answers to questi ...[Read More]

The coolest groundwater paper of 2013!

What paper inspired you the most in 2013? The Early Career Hydrogeologists’ Network (ECHN) of the International Association of Hydrogeologists (IAH) has announced a new contest: ‘2013 Coolest Paper of the Year’ award (described in this Hydrogeology Journal editorial). I nominated Fan et al (Science, 2013) who completed a Herculean effort to map the depth to the water table globally for the f ...[Read More]

Co-teaching a blended class across universities: why? and why not?

Co-teaching a blended class across universities: why? and why not?

This term I am co-teaching a graduate class in advanced groundwater hydrology with Grant Ferguson (University of Saskatchewan) and Steve Loheide (University of Wisconsin – Madison). In co-developing and co-delivering this course we have learned a lot – I’ll start here with our initial motivations and write later about our pedagogic decisions, software tools and reflections after the course. It is ...[Read More]

Why read “Water Underground” blog? And for me, why write a blog?

Why read “Water Underground” blog? And for me, why write a blog?

My reason to blog is really quite simple: to share what doesn’t currently fit into peer-reviewed articles. I will write about groundwater as well as how I research, teach, supervise and collaborate. In short I hope to cover the whole kit and caboodle of academia, from the underground perspective of groundwater. Why read this blog? Time is precious so only read on if you are interested and/or passi ...[Read More]